Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Unfortunately, this story isn't nearly as titillating or romantic as that title might suggest. But it does feature an attractive stranger in black leather astride a powerful Harley-Davidson motorcycle coming to my rescue!

The good news is that I'm fine and home in Nashville, safe and sound. The bad news is that my car is dead and parked (safely) off a major highway about an hour's drive from my home, until I can find a mechanic to work on it (couldn't find one open on Sunday in that mostly rural locale), so I'm without wheels for the foreseeable future.

But it could have gone much worse, if it weren't for the kindness of the nice young man on the Harley, who pulled over when he saw me standing helplessly next to my car (wondering which farmhouse to try to walk to in order to call for help) and took a major detour out of his way to a Harley rally in Lynchburg, TN, in order to help me out.

I had a preaching job this morning at a church whose pulpit I've supplied many times over the past 6 years, maybe 80 miles from Nashville. When I was still 15 miles or more short of my destination, my car suddenly died (engine cut off while driving 60 mph down the highway) and refused to restart. That was at about 10:15 AM, with me scheduled to preach at an 11:00 AM service that I now had no way of getting to.

Fortunately, I hadn't been standing there more than a minute or two (though several cars had had time to whiz past without stopping) when the nice young man on a Harley Davidson motorcycle (whose name I never did get, but I gave him my business card in case he's ever in Nashville, so I can take him out to eat or something in thanks) came by and pulled up to see if he could help. Bless his heart, he was more than willing to take me the rest of the way, only worried about my long skirt and longer hair getting mussed on the back of his hog.

He had an extra helmet and an extra black leather vest for me to wear over my lavender silk jacket (to keep the bugs off, he said, but by keeping my hair under the vest it also served to anchor down all but the last foot or so of my hair, which hung down below the bottom of the vest). So, I folded up the manila file with my sermon in it and stuffed that in my capacious purse, slung the purse across my back, got my legs covered with enough skirt for decency on either side of the motorcycle with my high-heeled lavender pumps on the footrests, and I rode behind him for the next 20 minutes or so -- a frightening but exhilerating experience.

After all that, he wouldn't even take gas money for his trouble (though he seemed to enjoy the thought of everyone at church seeing the minister arrive on the back of a Harley!). "That's just the way I was raised," he said, explaining his desire to always help out if he could. John Wayne couldn't have said it better.

Anyway, some church folks took me back to my car this afternoon and tried to restart it, but finally had to conclude that the fuel pump or something about the fuel system was not working (no gas getting from the gas tank into the engine, apparently, though I knew there was more than half a tank of gas in there, and they poured two more gallons into the fuel tank just in case).

I got a ride into Nashville with some of those church folks who were heading that way (after we'd pulled my car into a handy gravel drive no longer being used by a nice farm family nearby), and I've got several phone numbers to call to try to find a mechanic in that area to pick up my car and work on it, but meanwhile, I'm pretty much stranded. (I'll probably have to rent a car to get down there to pick up my vehicle later this week, or something.)

Thank God for good Samaritans in black leather with cute black pony-tails peeping out from under their helmets who ride Harleys!